an annual print literary journal

Kenai Birch

The two trees fell together overnight.
Grown so close, so intertwined,
they brought each other down.
They were there for me on Wednesday
(“Wednesday’s child is full of woe”)
flat across my path along the lake,
crowns bending toward the water—too soon
Parks and Rec arrived to clear them off.
Comforting if we’d been like that:
grown too close too intertwined so doomed,
picturesque connection, tragic loss.
But our long marriage died routinely—
worn down, habitual, parched.
Blocking no one but ourselves.

***

Jill Dery has published stories in Bellingham Review, Fourteen Hills, and others; she’s published poetry in Antiphon, San Pedro River Review, Penn Review, and Broad Street, and has poems forthcoming in Tule Review. Her MFA in poetry is from UC Irvine. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she’s lived in Anchorage since 1992.